College Basketball Writer Jason King Leaves Yahoo for ESPN

Mild surprise today in the tiny world of sports media: Jason King, who was the college basketball writer for Yahoo Sports, left to take a job at ESPN. Word on the street is that King, who previously wrote for the KC Star and has a college football background, is going to be doing mostly college basketball. Apparently the hire is effective Friday. King will join a pretty formidable team of Andy Katz, Dana O’Neil and Pat Forde. ESPN will be doing plenty of jousting with the CBS tandem of Parrish & Goodman. (That’s a joke, of course; basically all of them are friendly except Katz and Goodman.)

There’s rampant – rampant! – speculation about who Yahoo will hire to cover college basketball this year, and the most prominent names include Pat Forde (ESPN), Pete Thamel (NYT) and Gary Parrish (CBS). Forde’s contract is up in the coming weeks/months, but even though there have long been rumblings about his potential departure, you have to wonder if ESPN would let one of its top college basketball/football guys walk to a rival.